Friday, March 23, 2007

Let's Roll!

I must have really spaced out to forget to mention that part of my hand fell off! Well, not part of my actual hand, but part of my GPS which is permanently affixed to my hand. Yeah, part of my GPS broke, I mostly blame Laura because she discovered the problem. He he. If you check out the picture to the right you can see my improvised solution to the problem. See the button on the side of the GPS - to the right of the electrical tape? Well, the button that was located above that fell off while we were out in the woods and fell into the weeds. Good luck finding it in that mess of sticks and grass... So, after a few unhappy thoughts I started thinking of how to fix the problem. First, I figured I could buy a new part, but I have been unable to find any, so I decided that a homemade solution was the answer. I took this straight out of "Denny's Cookbook of Simple Home Fixes." You can't find the book in any stores, so don't bother looking, it's one of those 'family things' that doesn't get published but somehow gets passed along to those who read into it. The book called for a quarter inch length of 3/16" dowel to be used for the absent button and the covered with electrical tape. Not too secure, mind you. Making the tape too tight would keep the button pushed constantly and that won't do.

So the GPS is fixed and ready for the trip - well, it's fixed for now anyway. I will keep some tape and a spare dowel length ready in case of emergency. After nearly 50,000 miles the GPS has had a rough life - a trip through Death Valley at 120 degrees, a hike into the wilderness of Yellowstone, moving from Nebraska to Montana, countless trips in the car, once I even left it on the top of the Canubaru and drove off with it up there! Needless to say, it took a lot of apologizing to the GPS before it would work properly.

On our trip we are going to be geocaching along the way. We are going to start a travel bug named Johnny Cache. What's a travel bug? Well, it's an item that has a tracking number on it, and when someone sees it or picks it up, they and take it with them and then drop it off at another cache. They log that they moved the item and you can follow it on the internet wherever it is traveling. Our travel bug is going to be like Johnny Cash and travel everywhere. You probably know the song "I've Been Everywhere" and he names a bunch of places off. Well, we are going to try to get the travel bug to as many places as possible from that list... The song starts out:

I was totin' my pack along the dusty Winnemucca road
When along came a semi with a high and canvas covered load
If you're going to Winnemucca, Mack, with me you can ride
So I climbed into the cab and then I settled down inside
He asked me if I'd seen a road with so much dust and sand
And I said, Listen, I've traveled every road in this here land.

So, just like the song, we are going to start our travel bug out somewhere near Winnemucca, Nevada and see where it goes. You can follow Johnny Cache around too, just go >>HERE<<.

Well, there is still some packing to finish before Laura gets home and I think the sink is full of dishes that need cleaned before we leave too, so I have enough to keep me busy for the afternoon. I'll be back to blogging on Monday April 2. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Packing Up

Not too much to blog today so I will get right to the trip planning. There isn't too much left to the trip planning to take care of either, we are pretty much ready to pack the car and hit the road. I changed the oil this morning, checked the air pressure in the tires, and checked the fluid levels so I guess the car is as ready as it can be.

Our last night of the trip we will be staying in Richland, Washington. We are going to see some of Laura's family while we are there. We stayed with them last year on our way to Portland and had a great time visiting! This time their oldest daughter and her husband will be there - she was in Albania last year, where she met her husband. They live in the U.S. now and have a new baby - born just a few weeks ago too.

From Richland we will head northeast to catch Interstate 90. We will stop in Spokane and do a little geocaching if it isn't too dark and then be on our way again. It's about three hours from Spokane to Missoula and our last day will be a short 350 miles! Right now I have our trip figured at 2,720 miles - just right for a week on the road! We'll see how accurate that is when we get back next week though. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

(Insert Explicit Word(s) Here) Deer!

As I sit in front of the keyboard this morning, I am listening to a woodpecker up on our roof. It's hammering away at something up there, and it's starting to get a little annoying. Too bad I left my pellet gun in Nebraska, I could use it about now. Thinking of which, I could use that pellet gun to 'thump' the deer around here and spook them off, maybe give them a sign I don't want them around at the same time. Last night those *@#! deer ate our flowers! I don't mind them eating the grass, that's fine, but get the h.e. double hockey sticks outta my flower garden! It took some work to get those flowers looking good, and now it chewed down to the ground... My blood pressure is rising as I think about it. Not to mention this morning as I watched the dogs run around in the backyard they tipped over my bird bath. Auh! Is it that hard to avoid running into a bird bath in a 500 square foot backyard? There are times when I remember why I don't want animals, especially when the owners let them run a muck in the backyard and front yard! The poop piles in the backyard are expected and we have learned to pay attention to them, but now they are all over in the front yard too, and I'm not used to watching my step in the front yard. And don't think that the deer and dogs are the only problem I have on my list. Over the weekend I planted some maple tree seeds in a flower pot to see if I could get them to grow. I left the flowerpot outside and wouldn't you know it, the darn cat dug up all the dirt and threw it out of the pot! I replanted what I could, but I suspect the seeds may have dried out overnight while they were exposed to the air. I'll just take a deep breath and count to ten every time I see that cat, otherwise it might catch the business end of my Reebok wearing foot, and then I might get in trouble. Although, I would feel a whole lot better about being in trouble. *deep breath*

I think the complaint department has taken enough information for the day so I will move on and speak of other matters. We opted out of Pub Quiz last night. turns out there were 4 other members of the 'team' who were sick as well and were staying home to recover from ailments so we stayed home as well. I parked myself on the couch for the evening and watched American Idol. If you saw the show last night then I think you will join me in a sigh of relief that we could all listen last night without too much agony. I will have to set the recorder tonight to see who is voted off the show, I plan to be playing ultimate tonight.

Yesterday I was doing some research on our trip. I got to thinking about the ghost town we will be visiting - Bodie, California. I realized the town was at 8,000 feet of elevation and there was a good chance of having several feet of snow on the ground. The town is actually a state park, so I sent an e-mail off to the park and received a quick reply stating the town was open and there is no snow on the ground, however the threat of snow over the next few days is possible, but I see temperatures are expected to be around the 50's - 60's through Sunday so I don't expect to see much snow at all.

Our drive from Fort Bragg, California to North Bend, Oregon will be a little over 350 miles. Before heading out from North Bend we are going to spend some time around the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area and see the ship wreck of the New Carissa. The ship was a Japanese oil tanker than ran aground and broke apart in 1999. Part of the ship was hauled out to sea and sank, but part of it still sits on the beach. We are going to camp at the dunes and hopefully we won't be fighting any weather overnight, it would be nice to camp out next to the ocean and just listen to the waves crash in all night, it sure beats the barking dogs we put up with around here!

From North Bend we will take 101 up the Oregon Coast to Lincoln City and then leave the ocean views and head inland to Salem to catch Interstate 5 through Portland. We will cross into Washington and then drive on the north side of of the Columbia river on Washington State Highway 14. We drove the Oregon side of the Columbia River last year and decided that the Washington drive would be nice as well. We will be driving into Richland, Washington that evening. That drive won't be so bad, it will be in the neighborhood of 450 miles.

Yesterday, cousin Bri clued me in on some news I have been neglecting. With all the trip planning and spring excitement I've missed out on a few family related events. My newest cousin, Kaleb, showed up a few weeks ago, March 5 I believe. That's not a bad birthday, my mom's birthday is March 4 so not a bad time to arrive. Congrats to the happy parents who now enjoy the presence of two little boys - a sure recipe for disaster! I would know, I have a brother.

At the other end of life we have to bid farewell to family as well. I didn't personally know my great-aunt, but anyone who lives to the age of 109 years is worth knowing about. What is more impressive is that at 109 years she was only beginning to have mental troubles - I know 25 year olds who can't remember what they had for breakfast, so anyone who is still 'with it' after all those years is impressive to say the least. My great-grandfather, her brother, is the last of the siblings living - he just turned 104 and still can tell you his high school football team roster.

Finally, Rex the Wonderdog has gone on to other hunting opportunities. Rex belonged to Laura's dad, he was the fourth child of the family so-to-speak. After 13 years he was still hunting and enjoying a good walk, but age caught up with him and tumors and such have a way of wearing down the body faster than normal. Rex kept me company in the basement over the Christmas break when I was building walls by myself, even though he was just sitting in the corner and chewing on a stick.

That's a long blog today without many pictures. I plan to make up for the lack of pictures after our trip, and hopefully I can keep the camera close at hand the entire time to snap a bunch of pictures. I've got some final plans to make and a few more things to pack today; so away I go to tackle a few more tasks before we leave. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Bye Bye Winter

Spring starts today at 6:07 pm (Mountain Time). The flowers are indicating that it's getting nice outside and they are approaching bloom. Laura and I worked the flowerbed this weekend, mostly racking out the leaves and moving the woodchips that were covering all the little flowers.

Laura is feeling better today, she has gone to the lab this morning to see how she does for the day. We both slept like rocks last night, we even took a nap yesterday afternoon for an hour. Ultimate Frisbee pick-up started yesterday evening so I went to play a little. I figured I was in bad shape, so I didn't expect to play for long, but turns out I was in pretty good shape and played the entire time - about an hour and a half. I definitely can feel it this morning though, my legs and back are tight and I am slow getting around, but that was expected. Might as well get through these pains now and do away with them once the spring league starts.

Laura and I managed to get through the science fair. We were actually judging the state science fair, much to our surprise. There are some very creative middle school and high school kids out here and it is good to see that they are interested in the sciences. We judged a global warming entry, string telephone, electromagnets, sun-baked cookies, and flame tested chemical entries. Laura was feeling the effects of little food and no sleep by the end of the first round so I brought her home to rest for the remainder of the day. I think that helped her out because she was much peppier this morning as she left for school. Pub quiz is tonight but I don't know if Laura will be going or not. We usually end around 11 and I think Laura will be tired far before we are done, especially if she is at the school the entire day.

We're coming down to four days until we leave for our trip! As far as my itinerary goes we have made it as far as Fort Bragg, California. We are going to continue north on Highway 1 to Highway 101 until we reach North Bend, Oregon and the Sand Dunes National Recreation Area. We are thinking we will camp at the dunes that night. On the way to North Bend we are going to geocache and hopefully find some time to find some good spots to pull over and watch the coastline for the Gray Whale migration which should be taking place. In North Bend we will have a chance to see a ship wreck on the beach, actually maybe a few ship wrecks along the way. We also will be traveling through the Redwood National Park - where the giant Redwood trees grow. That should be neat to see and hopefully we won't have too much on our plate for the day so we can take advantage of all the fun.

Time to start packing our bags and getting the car ready for the trip! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Monday, March 19, 2007

A Long Night

It was a rough night. Laura has come down with an illness and had a terrible time sleeping. She's running a fever and has an upset stomach - she came down with it just as we were going to bed last night around 10:30. By 2:30 has was tossing and turning - waking me up so I spent most of the night talking to her and getting a few minutes of sleep where I could.

Today is the science fair for the public schools and Laura and I signed up to be judges a few weeks ago. I think we are going to try going and judging, but Laura will be coming home with me after the fair, no need for her to be at the school all day long feeling sick or to make others sick as well.

Other than last night our weekend went really good. Saturday we did some geocaching, we did a geocache designed to be done in the dark with flashlights. That was a lot of fun to be 30 miles from Missoula in the dark and actually see the stars - haven't seen those in awhile. Just before dark we did a cache which required us to walk across a bridge - one that looks like the bridges you see in the movies! Laura really liked it, and you can see from the photo she was jumping up and down and swinging the bridge from side to side. Just like an Indiana Jones movie!

I think I left off on day 4 of our trip. We will spend the day before in San Francisco and then we will be headed north across the Golden Gate Bridge and then on to Point Reyes (Rays) which is Spanish is king - Point of the Kings. We are going to continue north to Goat Rock State Beach where the final scene of The Goonies was filmed.

From there we will be on our way north on Highway 1 up the California coast to Fort Bragg, CA to stay the night. Day 4 won't be a very bad drive as far as mileage goes, less than 250 miles along the coast!

It looks like my day will be spent taking care of Laura and it is about time to scoot out the door to the science fair. For having such a long night, my morning is already going quite fast! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Friday, March 16, 2007

Don't Forget Your Green

Ah, the weekend is close and St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow, so don't forget the green! We've got temperatures forecasted to be around 60 and sunny and I am looking forward to enjoying the weekend. Three new geocaches popped up around Missoula this morning so I am sure we will be doing some geocaching. Ultimate Frisbee will be starting up soon as well, when we get back from our spring break trip it will be time for spring league to begin.

Yesterday I mentioned we would have our seconds shortest day of our trip, and today I will tell you about our shortest day. We will be spending the day in San Francisco. We plan on catching the 9:30 "Early Bird" shuttle to Alcatraz Island and tour the prison for the morning. In the afternoon we will spend some time around Fisherman's Wharf and the Presidio of San Francisco (the park on the south side of The Golden Gate Bridge). The Presidio is actually part of a Spanish fort built in 1776 but the U.S. took possession in 1846 during the Mexican-American War.

It's about 15 miles from our hotel to the northern tip of San Francisco, so we will have a relatively short day of traveling, but we are expecting to walk a few miles once we park the car for the day.

Have a good weekend, it's the last 'winter' weekend to enjoy for awhile! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Thursday Evening Post

Lately I have been blogging in the morning, but today it's an evening blog. Laura needed to do some work at the school this evening so she took the morning off and spent it with me doing some grocery shopping. We made a trip to Costco and stocked up on snacks for our trip next week, mostly consisting of a 6 pound bag of gummy bears and a 12 pack of gram crackers. We did get the usual 4 gallons of milk, which had been $1.92 but now are $2.18 - still beats Wal-Mart but geez, a quarter more a gallon is a quick hike.

Along with gas taking a quick hike, gas has gone up a quarter in the past few weeks as well. Just what we need before hitting the road. Day three will be our shortest day of the trip - well, second shortest actually, but we will actually be on the road on day three. We will travel from Tracy, California into San Francisco, about 100 miles since we will be driving around the south end of the bay. The rest of the day will be doing whatever we feel like doing, maybe making a trip downtown to Chinatown or something.

Yesterday I cooked up some duck chili. I ground up the duck meat in the meat grinder and then browned it before adding it to the crock pot of chili. I used six breasts and that seems to be about right for the butter bowl sized chili bowl. I did find a surprise in my browned duck though, a #4 steel shot. Not something you want to bite into, more than likely your tooth will lose that battle.

The spring temperatures are warming things up around here and the flowers are starting to show up. Soon we will be seeing flowers all over the place and hopefully no one will be cutting our flowers this year - just let them grow where they are, not in a vase. Yes, I am a little bitter about an event from last spring which involved the cutting of some very lovely flowers, and that is all I will say, I will say no more. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Top 12

It's American Idol night, and the great thing about it is we are down to the final 12. Finally! Sadly there are a few singers in the top 12 who didn't deserve to make it past the 2nd round, but somehow they are onto the finals... If you don't follow the show then most of this doesn't make much sense to you, but you don't know what you are missing out on.

Day two of our trip will be a drive of about 550 miles. We will be traveling through Reno and Lake Tahoe before heading on a detour south to visit a ghost town. Bodie, California is a ghost town near the California & Nevada boarder and was a mining town founded in the mid 1870's. Like I mentioned before, Bodie is what you think about when you think of the 'Wild West." Gunfights, gold miners, opium dens, saloons, bank robbers, prostitutes, claim jumpers, jail breaks and more. The town had well over 5000 residents in the 1880's and there are still over 120 buildings standing from the boom. It is one of the best ghost towns to see.

After Bodie we are going to be making our way over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Stockton, California where we are going to jump on the Interstate and head for Tracy, CA to spend the night just a few hours from San Francisco. Only 10 days until we leave!

Tonight is Pub Quiz night and hopefully we can improve from last week. I have looked at my atlas a few times and have a good refresher of my world countries, hopefully I won't forget by tonight! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Monday, March 12, 2007

Welcome To The 1000 Club

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We finally made it! 1000! Over the weekend we went for a drive and wow, what a drive it turned out to be. We ended up finding 11 for the day and we hiked close to 8 miles. We went for a hike along Como Lake which is South of Missoula about 50 miles. That was a 6 mile hike, round trip, to a waterfall that had ice frozen around it. That was a neat sight and we liked the flat hike out too the falls. While we were at the falls we started finding a few ticks crawling around on our coats - great, ticks are beginning to show up and there is still snow on the ground. Perhaps the ticks are a better than encountering a bear or moose along the trail so I guess we will deal with what we encounter. Speaking of bears, we are in need of some bear spray. I think after we get back from our trip we will be investing in a can or two - just in case.

Later in the day we did some caching in the mountains. That turned out to be a real treat. We knew a cache was up on the mountain above us so we drove up to the trailhead to see if we could get to the cache in a relatively quick manner. When we drove up there we discovered that everyone was under several feet of snow and so it seemed like a bad idea to hike up to the cache. As we were turning around the car found the edge of the packed snow and slid into the soft snow on the edge of the parking area. Oops! Even though the Canoubaru is all-wheel-drive it couldn't get out of the snow because it was buried up to the axle on the left side. Well, we carry shovels in the vehicles in the winter and it's a good thing. This is the second time we have gotten the car stuck while geocaching around deep snow!

I dug around the car and then dug under the car for a few minutes, in the mean time Laura took some pictures of our predicament and then crawled into the driver seat and rolled the window down to receive my instructions to get the car out. There was a large rock a few feet in front of the car so we didn't want to slide into it. Laura does very well when she drives the car around town, but I think I need to teach her about being stuck...

After I had worked up a good sweat and had a large area cleared for the car to drive out of the snow I told Laura to drive it out. Laura scooted the car forward and killed it - it's a manual transmission. So I told her "Give it some gas." So she started the car up again and this time the car scooted forward and moved forward but died once again. However, this time I saw the car slide deeper into the snow and knew I would have to dig out more snow. She looked at me from the driver seat as I stood next to the car and I informed her "You gotta give it some gas, let me do it." Maybe a little harsh, but I was tired of digging and didn't want to bury the right side of the car up the axles either. I knew that would be big trouble. After digging awhile longer, I jumped in the car and got it rocking before I punched the gas and drove it out of the hole.

I attribute my ability to dig a car out of snow to my friend Andy. It seems when we were in high school we found our way into more snow drifts than we did drive on the road.

Thinking of driving down the road, it's only eleven days until Laura and I hit the road for our spring break trip. The first day we are planning on leaving early in the morning and driving south on highway 93 all the way through Idaho to Wells, Nevada. From there we are going to take I-80 to Winnemucca, Nevada to stay the night. That will be our biggest day of the entire trip, about 650 miles. Yes, Winnemucca is the town you hear about from Johnny Cash in his song I've Been Everywhere. It starts out "I was toting my pack along the dusty Winnemucca road. When along came a semi with a high and canvas covered load. 'If you're going to Winnemucca mack, with me you can ride..." We haven't exactly been everywhere, but we are slowly getting there, and after this trip we will be a little closer. My next blog I'll tell you about day two. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Friday, March 09, 2007

Saving Time

Don't forget to set your clocks ahead an hour this weekend. We are 'saving' time almost three weeks earlier this year. Your computer might not set the time correctly this weekend unless you have downloaded the proper updates, but don't worry. You have several options to take care of this mini-Y2K problem. You can set the time ahead manually, in which case you will have to set it manually again in three weeks when the old daylight saving time kicks in and sets the time ahead again; OR you can just remember that your computer time isn't correct and it will set itself in three weeks as it usually does.

I am excited to see if my atomic clock sets itself correctly. Yes, the atomic clock receives a signal from Fort Collins, CO and sets itself accordingly. All I have to do is set the time zone I am in and it does the work. Neat huh!

...and I finally finished the headboard! I installed it on the bed yesterday and I think I should have waited an extra day to let the smell of the stain wear off a little more. Our house smells! Whoa - at least it has been warmer and I can open the windows to let the house air out. The headboard isn't exactly a work to admire, it looks pretty good at first glance, but don't look too close, there are a lot of things that I could have done better. For starters, I used pine and fir and most of the boards are construction grade cuts with a skill saw. There are still deep sawmill marks on the 2x10 boards, but that's not a big deal to me - I have a feeling it will get beat up when we pack and move anyway so keeping it in good condition will be a trick to begin with. Another thing is I used a cherry stain to get a red tint to the wood, but the bed is stained in a dark dark brown color so the two don't match in the slightest. Oh well, it was a good project to keep me busy and I have found that doing some small projects with wood is relaxing as well. If I could improve my woodworking skills I would build all sorts of furniture but I've got aways to go - but you only improve through practice.

Laura brought her bike down from the garage yesterday evening. She checked it over last night and rode it to the lab this morning. I don't really like her riding her bike around here. People just don't pay attention and in the past four weeks there have been four vehicle/pedestrian accidents. Just in the past 9 months I can think of about seven additional pedestrian accidents that have happened here in town and nearby areas - that seems a little ridiculous in such a 'pedestrian friendly' area.

This weekend we are going to take another trip south to Hamilton and do some more geocaching. We will pass the big 1000 this weekend! FINALLY! We will have our 1000 by the time we leave for our spring break trip - which I will be blogging about next week. Have a good weekend. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Closing In On Spring

The Northern Hemisphere is approaching the spring season, it's only two weeks away now, and yesterday suggested that we might just make it. The high way 52 but on the south-facing deck I was comfortably working at 68. I decided to put the first coat of stain on the headboard so that took up most of my afternoon. If we make it back into the 50's today I will probably apply another coat of stain. Actually the prediction is in the 6o's but the cloud coverage we have right now might keep it a little cooler.

It was Pub Quiz night last night. We kind of floundered though, one of our worst appearances actually. I have determined that I need to study my world atlas and facts. There are usually one or two geography related questions and I usually have a good idea, but occasionally I totally drop the ball. At one time I could name all the countries and their capitals, but since I have not been using that knowledge I have really lost it.

I need to go dig through my books and find my world atlas. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Monday, March 05, 2007

On The Trail

Ouh! I must be out of shape. When I am breathing hard and my legs are a little tight after a weekend of hiking then I know I am in need of some exercise.

Laura and I did some hiking this weekend to find some geocaches. We did about 12 miles of walking, six of which were through snow.

Saturday we went for a drive about 20 miles west of Missoula. The picture on the right is why I like geocaching so much. These icicles were near a cache we were looking for, and they were up on a cliff which was off the beaten path. We had to hike around to get to the cache and passed by them on the way. While I was taking pictures of the moss and icicles I heard Laura yelling about something so I went to see what was going on.

Whoa! An old railroad tunnel! Sweet! This one was only about 200 feet long, but it was still cool. When I was a senior in college I did some Nebraska Ghost Town research and visited the only railroad tunnel in Nebraska which is located south of Crawford at a ghost town known as Belmont. That tunnel is pictured on the right. It is 800 feet long, and as you can see it is no longer used - it was built in the 1880's and then had some work done around 1920. Anyway, I kind of like checking out the old tunnels and this was a good one to see.

The Nebraska tunnel was not very tall, in fact it was too short for a lot of newer trains. Most of the steam locomotives just barely cleared the tunnel. The tunnel we cached around on Saturday was much taller. It doesn't look very large from the picture of Laura, but see if you can find me in this one.

Did you find me? I blend in with the rocks pretty well. I figured this is where my friend Andy would have gone to look for the geocache so that's where I went too. I should have known better, and Laura found it down below while I was climbing around up above. I look quite small when you look at me crouching down and the distance I would fall to the bottom!

We had a blast caching around the tunnel and checking out the icicles hanging inside as well. I took some pictures of them, but it doesn't show much. The icicles were about 20 feet long and several feet wide. Definitely capable of crushing a person if they fell on them! Anyway, that was one of my favorite places to cache around. When we got home to check out the cache on the internet we discovered that there were Indian writings on the rocks as well, but we didn't see those - I guess we were too captivated by the tunnel.

Yesterday morning was gorgeous. The temperature was almost 40 by 10:00 in the morning so we decided to take a hike in the mountains and find a geocache that required a bit of a hike. We had to hike 3 miles to get to it, which required hiking through the snow the entire way, but it was worth it. We managed to hike the 6 miles in 2 hours and 5 minutes - that is including the time we spent at the cache and took pictures. So we felt pretty good about our hiking and being in shape, however we were feeling it later on when it caught up with us. Like I said though, it was worth it. We only encountered about 4 groups on the trek out to the cache and there was no one around when we arrived. After our six mile hike through the snow we did some caches in town so we didn't have to walk through the snow, however that turned out to be mud we were walking through so we didn't gain much in that case, but we didn't have to hike much more than half a mile to get to the caches so that wasn't so bad either.

We now have 996 caches and really really want to have 1000 by the time we leave for our trip so we are doing everything we can to find some caches nearby. We might have to take a little drive this weekend to find a few more and clear the millennium mark.

Today I plan on heading out for a run and then doing some dishes. We are starting our spring cleaning and we shampooed the carpets Saturday night and they are looking good. That is basically the extent to our spring cleaning, other than organizing our gear in the garage when it warms up. We do a good job of keeping the house clean so we don't have to do much spring cleaning - but I can pretend the dishes are part of the spring cleaning effort.

Time to lace up my running shoes and head out the door. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Mountain Dew

They say the first steps in getting over an addiction is knowing that you are addicted. Well, I'm not so sure I am addicted to Mountain Dew, but I sure like it. I don't crave it constantly, and I usually only drink it if I am watching sports or with my lunch at work. However, Tuesday night at Pub Quiz I think our waitress would claim otherwise. Laura and I showed up around 7:00 to talk and play Crazy Bee Rummy until the quiz began at 8:00. By the time the quiz started I had already put away 2 glasses and was starting my third. When I asked for another refill (their free so why not) she just brought me a pitcher of Mt. Dew! She knows how to earn a tip from me!

By the time we left around 11:00 I was much satisfied with my 8 refills! She even refilled my pitcher after I had downed it once. I have voted her the best waitress ever!

I figured if the cup was 16-20 ounces then I drank between 128 & 160 ounces of Mt. Dew - basically a twelve pack. It seemed to help me think at Pub Quiz and I knew a few answers, but maybe that is the reason I didn't fall asleep until 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday. HA HA!

Laura woke me up at 7:30 when she got up to get ready for school and I got up to listen to Talk of the Town and do my daily e-mail check and internet readings. We have been getting about an inch of snow each night and I scoop that before it warms up so the driveway and sidewalks are clear for the rest of the day. I am just on my way out to scoop this morning as well.

I ran on Monday and Tuesday, but skipped Wednesday with the snow. I just don't like the way people drive around here, and even in the residential areas there is enough evidence of bad drivers - holes in fences - and I am hesitant to go run with the slick roads. Just this past weekend a driver hit a pedestrian and drove with him on the hood for a full block before stopping and throwing the pedestrian from the hood - the driver then drove away! I can go on and on about the stories we have seen on the news in the past year and a half. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Well, that snow is calling me and I am ready to get outside for awhile. Have a great day! Until again

-=Nolan=-